JerusalemPost: Jewish historian gives credence to 'blood libel'

[spect8or]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satell...70359806416&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

An Israeli historian of Italian origin has revived "blood libel" in an historical study set to hit Italian bookstores on Thursday. Ariel Toaff, son of Rabbi Elio Toaff, claims that there is some historic truth in the accusation that for centuries provided incentives for pogroms against Jews throughout Europe.

Toaff's tome, Bloody Passovers: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders, received high praise from another Italian Jewish historian, Sergio Luzzatto, in an article in the Corriere della Serra daily entitled "Those Bloody Passovers."

Luzzatto describes Toaff's work as a "magnificent book of history...Toaff holds that from 1100 to about 1500...several crucifixions of Christian children really happened, bringing about retaliations against entire Jewish communities - punitive massacres of men, women, children. Neither in Trent in 1475 nor in other areas of Europe in the late Middle Ages were Jews always innocent victims."

"A minority of fundamentalist Ashkenazis...carried out human sacrifices," Luzzatto continued.


Lol. This made me burst out laughing. The timing of my coming upon this article is exquisite. Private joke, so don't worry about it

 

[dddooo]

Oy vey, that sounds convincing:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satell...70359806416&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Toaff offers as an example the case of Saint Simonino of Trent. In March 1475, shortly after a child's body was found in a canal near the Jewish area of Trent, the city's Jews were accused of murdering Simonino and using his blood to make matzot.

After a medieval trial in which confessions were extracted by torture, 16 members of Trent's Jewish community were hanged.

Toaff reveals that the accusations against the Jews of Trent "might have been true."

Besides:
To all this, Dr. Amos Luzzatto comments, "Even if the author should manage to prove that a deviant sect existed for centuries...clearly it could never be identified as a Jewish group, or as part of a Jewish community. This would be comparable to saying that the rabbis who were present at [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran represent mainstream Judaism."

 

[spect8or]

Well, sure, it doesn't justify pogroms. It's just amusing that despite the hysteria generated about it by Jews, it seems there is some rational basis for believing that cases of it existed, despite it being 'deviant', non-standard or rare.

Why have Jewish pressure groups been so unreasonable about it? It's completely understandable that they'd want people thinking only the nicest things about them, but come on man, if you accuse people of what borders on mental illness for raising any sort of question that reflects even slightly unfavorably on Jews, and then evidence emerges that such questions are hardly unreasonable, doesn't this set Jews up for backlash?

Same thing with the holocaust. Regardless of whether or not Jews were actually gassed by the million, it's a frontal assault on freedom of conscience to demand people affirm a historical fact that they might not know the first thing about. As I said in the other thread, I see every reason to doubt the gassings. Yet Jewish pressure groups are working day and night to enact French/German style legislation that criminalises the expression of such doubts. Since truth hardly requires censorship to protect it, it's difficult to avoid reading it as a virtual admission of the flimsiness of their case. I'm guessing there are going to be a lot of pissed off people should they ever come to learn the solid ground that holocaust revisionism rests on. From the Jewish perspective, it's a necessary game, nevertheless a potentially dangerous one.